Dark Full of Enemies(2)

Barnes did not stop to see what effect this wisecracking had. He opened the door and hustled McKay outside into the dark.

McKay’s uniform confused people in Britain. Locals recognized his accent as American—a yank of some variety, a Southerner—but the uniform was unlike any American one they ordinarily saw. He certainly was not Canadian. They wore woolen khaki the same as the most English of Tommies, or even the Australian McKay had put on the floor. This severe looking man with his dark hair and wrathful eyes wore a deep, drab green, and even his badges and buttons were wrong—matte black. Nothing shiny but the silver bars on his shoulders, another tiny clue to his Americanness.

As soon as they were outside, Barnes said, “Well, you gotta helluva right hook, Captain.”

“Shut up, Barnes.”

Barnes nodded. McKay sounded not angry, but defeated. He would probably have been in a foul mood, too, he thought. He offered McKay a cigarette and they lit up, backs against the wind. They puffed a moment and then Barnes gestured the way he and Lieutenant Heyward had come.

“Car’s up the street a bit.”

“All right.”

Barnes and McKay started walking along the dark pavement. Though still late afternoon, blackout conditions and the early sunset of British winter had turned London into a web of dark gullies, deep-sea trenches swum by slit-eyed trucks and jeeps, giving just enough light to remind one of the day. McKay turned up his collar. Barnes went on.

“What you reading?”

“Thucydides.”

“Say what?”

“Greek history. The Peloponnesian War.”

“Hm,” Barnes said. McKay was always reading something. He brought books into briefings and packed them on missions. It was strange to Barnes. He recalled that McKay had been some kind of professor, or been to college, before the war. He told stories—used examples from literature and history in his briefings—to help the planners, presenting them always in his deep, calm but firm Southern accent—not the aristocratic drawl of Gone With the Wind, Barnes, a Hoosier, noticed, but something else, something stronger. And hearing McKay recall Roman mistakes or Greek pitfalls or the lessons of such-and-such a campaign—the variety of examples teeming in McKay’s brain flummoxed Barnes. He glanced again at the book.

“Good?”

“A classic.”

Barnes changed the subject. “I gotta say, we were just in time.”

“That’s true. Thank y’all.”

“Still, better get out before some MPs show up. Or some bobbies.”

“Heyward isn’t taking care of that?”

“Ah, he’s in there taking care of something. You know him. Don’t worry about it.” They reached the car, and Barnes climbed in behind the wheel. McKay got in the back. Ahead of them the pub door opened and Heyward stepped out, braced himself against the cold, and walked toward them. Barnes looked at McKay in the mirror.

“What that guy want?”

“Wanted to know what sort of a uniform this is. Where I come from. If I’m a spy.”

“Idiot. Spies don’t wear uniforms.”

“He was in his cups.”

Barnes regarded McKay a moment more. He sat in the back, staring out the window, gripping his book with both hands. “Edgy, huh?”

Barnes was serious. McKay looked him in the eye for the first time.

“A bit.” He looked out the window again. “I haven’t been getting much sleep.”

“Yeah, well, don’t worry about it,” Barnes said and added, regretfully, “That’ll be useful where you’re going.”

McKay nodded. Heyward climbed in and shut his door and, as Barnes pressed the starter, turned in his seat.

“Jesus, Captain—you have to knock him out like that?”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“You socked him right in the temple.”

McKay looked out the window as if thinking. At last, he said, “I was aiming for his throat.”

Heyward laughed, slapped the back of the seat, and turned around.

“Marines.” Heyward shook his head. “I tell ya—you guys are mean sonsabitches.”





McKay was not the only Marine in Europe. He knew that, even if the stares at his unusual uniform set him ill at ease. Fleet Marines protected many of the American ships gathering daily in the harbors of the British Isles, and there were other Marines—though he had never met them—in his outfit, the Office of Strategic Services.

The OSS had its London headquarters on Grosvenor Street, a five minute drive from the pub in good traffic, but Barnes turned the car north and left the city.

“Not meeting at HQ?” McKay said.

“Not this time,” Heyward said. “The Colonel’s waiting at the mansion.”

They drove several minutes into the farmland and forest north of London. Barnes took a side road, shut off his blackout headlights completely and drove a few more minutes by moonlight before turning into a tree-lined lane. Ahead of them in the gloom the gray shape of a stone gate appeared, and Barnes slowed. Two soldiers approached, a sergeant and a corporal with black MP armbands, bundled head to toe in Army winter gear. They raised one hand to stop the car but rested the other, McKay noticed, on the Thompson submachine guns slung across their bodies. Barnes rolled down his window and announced himself to the corporal, an old buddy named Phelps, while the sergeant hung back. McKay recognized the sergeant—he had seen him on guard several times before—but did not know his name. He stood, studiedly casual, at the front left fender with the Thompson slung across his chest, and watched.